Before 2020, a small number of companies would offer a small number of passenger seats on freighters, including on transatlantic and transpacific routes. Have any returned post-pandemic or are they all permanently defunct? As of 2024:
- freightercruises.com notes that the only large-pre-covid provider has decided to permanently cease passenger services,
- langsamreisen.de notes that passenger transport on cargo ships is unfortunately still limited to a few active routes (between Europe and Africa or within Polynesia),
- zylmann notes only routes within Europe or between Europe and Africa,
- grimaldi notes all passenger freighter services are suspended for 2023 (no info for 2024 yet as of 2024-01-11),
- hamburg süd has not been updated for several years (as of 2024-01-11, they note there will be none in 2020 and invite people to make inquiries for 2021 and 2022),
- cptn zeppos have listings between Europe and Africa, but not across the Atlantic or the Pacific,
- cargoshipvogayes does have a listing, but they don't know where, don't know when, and don't know the price, and the ship they use is not really a cargo ship; the same listing exists at shipntrain, except they say it's not even sure the ship will even go to North America
- the websites cruisepeople.co.uk, cargoshipcruises.nl, and freighterexpeditions.com.au are all defunct.
Crossing the Atlantic is still possible on the Queen Mary 2 and possibly there are cruise companies with transatlantic or transpacific (repositioning) cruises, but are there any freighters carrying passengers across the Atlantic or Pacific left as of 2024, or firmly planned to return back to service?
